But the pressure was low, I discovered. Nearly all the vital gas had escaped, by diffusion through the solid metal. There was enough, perhaps, for a few hours. Wolfish hunger came to me, and a parching thirst. But all the food aboard had gone to dust. The water tanks, through slow evaporation, were empty. I rubbed a film of ancient dust from the ports, and found the Earth. Yes, it had to be the Earth--but how it was changed! The continents were larger, their familiar outlines altered; the seas had dwindled. What ages had I slept! I knew that I must reach the aging planet before those few remaining pounds of oxygen were gone, or perish. I wound the chronometer--it was strange to hear its racing tick again, after those millennia of stillness. Gingerly, then, I tried the rocket-firing keys. There was no response. Stiffly, awkwardly, I climbed down among the tanks. Any movement, I felt, might tear my brittle skin like paper. I stumbled. But I found the trouble. The fuel pumps were clogged and rusted with a dried gum, stuck. But there was good fuel remaining in the sealed tanks. I found a can of oil, got the pumps to working, and cleaned the sponge-platinum detonators. Wearily, I clambered back, tried again. A moment of agonizing silence. Then a shattering explosion hurled the rocket sidewise. Only one tube had fired. But presently I got another started, and the third, and steered the _Astronaut_ toward the Earth. It was then that I first noticed a very queer thing. Against the black of space, beside the bright sunlit globe of the time-changed planet, I saw hundreds of little red stars. A crimson swarm, in regular lines and files, they swept about the Earth in a curiously, an ominously, purposeful order. What could they be? My blurred, aching eyes, so far inferior to that perception that had come as I slept, could tell me nothing. But they saw something stranger still. Something was wrong with the Earth itself! It had seemed very near me in the void, with its greenish, shrunken seas and its greater continents widely patched with the yellow-red of unfamiliar deserts--so near that I almost felt that I could reach out and take it in my hand, like a ball. But suddenly it flickered. An unaccountable haze, of red light and darkness, wrapped it briefly. Its surface shimmered queerly, as if seen through a veil of strange energy. In a moment it was clear again, and I thought the trouble must have been in my throbbing eyes. But still I could see the ordered swarm of crimson stars. And I discovered that I would have to change the course of the rocket--as if the flight of Earth had been checked! My numb hands touched the levers--and there was an abrupt, shattering explosion! The rocket began spinning giddily. I clung to the controls, and shut off the remaining motors--for one had ceased to fire. In the silence I heard a deadly sound--the hiss of escaping gas.